September 11 2001 9:37
9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001: United Flights Are Told to Bar Cockpit Entry Captain Jim Hosking, piloting United Flight 890 from Japan to Los Angeles, is sent a warning message to his cockpit printer. It reads, “There has been a terrorist attack against United Airlines and American Airlines aircraft. We are advised there may be additional hijackings in progress. Shut down all access to the flight deck. Unable to elaborate further.” He tells his first officer, “Get out the crash axe.” Other pilots are receiving similar messages around this time. TODAY, 8/13/2002 Entity Tags: Jim Hosking Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001: Pentagon Law Enforcement Deputy Finally Makes Call to Raise Alert Level At the time the Pentagon is struck, a member of the Defense Protective Service (DPS), which guards the Pentagon, is in the process of ordering the threat level be raised. John Pugrud, the deputy chief of the DPS, has met with DPS Chief John Jester, and Jester directed him to instruct the DPS Communications Center to raise the Force Protection Condition up one level, from Normal to Alpha (see (Shortly Before 9:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001). The moment the Pentagon is hit, Pugrud has the phone in his hand to dial the center. When his call is answered, he can hear the center’s alarms activating and radio calls taking place. The dispatcher yells: “We’ve been hit! We’ve been hit! Wedge one. Wedge one.” According to the Defense Department’s book about the Pentagon attack, no one in DPS has received any warning of a hijacked aircraft heading toward Washington. ET AL., 2007, PP. 152 No steps have been taken to alert Pentagon employees or evacuate the building. 2007, PP. 429 Around 30 minutes after the attack occurs, the US military will increase its threat level to Defcon Delta, the highest possible level (see (10:10 a.m.) September 11, 2001). 9/4/2002 This will be reduced to “Charlie” before the end of the week. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 9/16/2001; USA TODAY, 9/16/2001 Entity Tags: Defense Protective Service, John Pugrud Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Pentagon 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001: Flight 77 Misses Key Pentagon Officials When Flight 77 hits the Pentagon, it misses the parts of the building known to house the military’s most senior leaders. Journalist and author Steve Vogel later says, “The hijackers had not hit the River or Mall sides” of the building, “where the senior military leadership had been concentrated since 1942.” At the time of the attack, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is “sitting in the same third-floor office above the River entrance as every secretary of defense since Louis Johnson in 1949, a location that had been a matter of public record all that time. The joint chiefs and all the service secretaries were arrayed in various prime E-Ring offices on the River and Mall sides.” Furthermore, “All the command centers save the Navy’s were on the River or Mall sides; the National Military Command Center could have been decimated as the Navy Command Center was, a disaster that could have effectively shut down the Pentagon as the first American war of the twenty-first century began.” Instead, the area hit comprises Army accounting offices, the Navy Command Center, and the Defense Intelligence Agency’s comptroller’s office. 2007, PP. 431 AND 449-450 Due to recent renovation work, many offices in that section of the Pentagon are currently empty. EXECUTIVE, 9/11/2001 Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pentagon Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight AA 77, Pentagon 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001: Fireman Dodges Flight 77; Immediately Notifies Superior about Crashed Jumbo Jet Internet researchers have put together this image showing how an object the size of a jumbo jet clips a number of light poles and then destroys columns inside the Pentagon. website Eric Bart (click image to enlarge) Fireman Alan Wallace is busy with a safety crew at the Pentagon’s heliport pad. As Wallace is walking in front of the Pentagon, he looks up and sees Flight 77 coming straight at him. It is about 25 feet off the ground, with no landing wheels visible, a few hundred yards away, and closing fast. He runs about 30 feet and dives under a nearby van. POST, 9/21/2001 The plane is traveling at about 460 mph, and flying so low that it clips the tops of streetlights. NEWS, 9/21/2001 Using the radio in the van, he calls his fire chief at nearby Fort Myer and says, “We have had a commercial carrier crash into the west side of the Pentagon at the heliport, Washington Boulevard side. The crew is OK. The airplane was a 757 Boeing or a 320 Airbus.” HOWARD NEWS SERVICE, 8/1/2002 Entity Tags: Pentagon, Fort Myer, Alan Wallace Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight AA 77, Pentagon (9:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Myers Speaks to NORAD Commander At some time after the second attack in New York, Richard Myers, the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, receives a call from NORAD Commander Ralph Eberhart. According to his own account, Myers is on Capitol Hill, where he has been meeting with Senator Max Cleland. Apparently soon after he leaves this meeting, his military aide, Army Captain Chris Donahue, hands him a cell phone on which Eberhart is calling. Myers will later comment, “In this emergency, I had to forgo the luxury of a secure encrypted red switch phone and use Donahue’s cell.” Myers will recall that Eberhart FORCES PRESS SERVICE, 10/23/2001; MSNBC, 9/11/2002; MYERS, 2009, PP. 8-9 Eberhart also tells Myers, “The decision I’m going to make is, we’re going to land everybody, and we’ll sort it out when we get them on the ground.” ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, 6/29/2006 He is presumably referring to a plan called SCATANA, which clears the skies and gives the military control over US airspace. However, Eberhart does not implement this until around 11:00 a.m. (see (11:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001). COMMISSION, 6/17/2004 It is unclear exactly when this call takes place, but it appears to be just before the time the Pentagon is hit, or just before Myers is informed of the Pentagon attack. 9/11/2002; 9/11 COMMISSION, 6/17/2004 ; 9/11 COMMISSION, 6/17/2004; COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, 6/29/2006; AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICE, 9/8/2006 In his 2009 memoirs, Myers will place it after he is informed of the second attack on the World Trade Center (see (Shortly After 9:03 a.m.) September 11, 2001), but not give a specific time. 2009, PP. 8-9 Cleland will confirm that Myers meets with him on this morning, and is with him up to the time of the Pentagon attack, or shortly before. CONGRESS, 9/13/2001; CNN, 11/20/2001; ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, 6/16/2003 However, according to Richard Clarke, Myers is back at the Pentagon speaking over a video conference around 10 minutes before the Pentagon is struck (see 9:28 a.m. September 11, 2001). 2004, PP. 5 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001: Flight 77 Crashes into Reinforced Section of the Pentagon The Pentagon explodes. Donley/ Sipa Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon. All 64 people on the plane are killed. A hundred-and-twenty-four people working in the building are killed, and a further victim will die in hospital several days later. 9/17/2001; NORTH AMERICAN AEROSPACE DEFENSE COMMAND, 9/18/2001; GUARDIAN, 10/17/2001; WASHINGTON POST, 11/21/2001; USA TODAY, 8/13/2002; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 8/21/2002; MSNBC, 9/3/2002; ABC NEWS, 9/11/2002; CBS NEWS, 9/11/2002 Flight 77 hits the first floor of the Pentagon’s west wall. The impact and the resulting explosion heavily damage the building’s three outer rings. The path of destruction cuts through Army accounting offices on the outer E Ring, the Navy Command Center on the D Ring, and the Defense Intelligence Agency’s comptroller’s office on the C Ring. 2007, PP. 431 AND 449 Flight 77 strikes the only side of the Pentagon that had recently been renovated—it was “within days of being totally renovated.” DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 9/15/2001 “It was the only area of the Pentagon with a sprinkler system, and it had been reconstructed with a web of steel columns and bars to withstand bomb blasts. The area struck by the plane also had blast-resistant windows—two inches thick and 2,500 pounds each—that stayed intact during the crash and fire. While perhaps, 4,500 people normally would have been working in the hardest-hit areas, because of the renovation work only about 800 were there.” More than 25,000 people work at the Pentagon. ANGELES TIMES, 9/16/2001 Furthermore, the plane hits an area that has no basement. As journalist Steve Vogel later points out, “If there had been one under the first floor, its occupants could easily have been trapped by fire and killed when the upper floors collapsed.” 2007, PP. 450 Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, Pentagon Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Key Day of 9/11 Events, All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight AA 77, Flight UA 93, George Bush, Pentagon 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001: Unlike Other Three Crashes, Pentagon Attack Does Not Produce Clear Seismic Signal The strike on the Pentagon does not generate a clear seismic signal. A study by the Maryland Geological Survey will state, “We analyzed seismic records from five stations in the northeastern United States, ranging from 63 to 350 km from the Pentagon. Despite detailed analysis of the data, we could not find a clear seismic signal. Even the closest station… did not record the impact. We concluded that the plane impact to the Pentagon generated relatively weak seismic signals.” The study, which is conducted at the request of the Army, states that there are seismic signals for the two planes impacting the World Trade Center and for the Flight 93 crash in Pennsylvania, which allow times to be determined for these events. AND BAUM, 2002 Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight AA 77, Pentagon (9:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Richard Clarke Learns of Aircraft Approaching White House Richard Clarke learns of an aircraft heading toward the White House. Clarke, who is in the White House Situation Room, is passed a note by Secret Service Director Brian Stafford, which says, “Radar shows aircraft headed this way.” 2004, PP. 7 Around this time, Boston Center is reporting a low-flying aircraft six miles southeast of the White House (see 9:36 a.m. September 11, 2001), so this is presumably the same airliner to which Stafford’s note refers. FAIR, 8/1/2006 Clarke later comments that the Secret Service is aware of the approaching plane because it has “a system that allowed them to see what FAA’s radar was seeing.” NEWSLETTER, 3/2006}} Stafford informs Clarke that he is going to evacuate the White House complex. (This evacuation appears to take place at around 9:45 (see (9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001).) Those in the Situation Room are then informed that there has been an explosion at the Pentagon, and soon after that a plane has hit it. 2004, PP. 7 (Between 9:37 a.m. and 9:58 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Mayor Giuliani Told Seven Planes Unaccounted For New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is told by his chief of staff that the White House knows of seven planes that are unaccounted for. He is told that the Pentagon has been hit, but also hears erroneous reports that the Sears Tower and other buildings have been hit. COMMISSION, 5/19/2004 Entity Tags: Rudolph (“Rudy”) Giuliani, Pentagon Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001: Navy Command Center Employees Killed While Trying to Get More Fighters Launched Diagram showing the area of impact at the Pentagon. The Navy Command Center is highlighted in red. Washington Post (click image to enlarge) Edward Earhart, Matthew Flocco, and their supervisor Lt. Nancy McKeown are inside the Pentagon, watching the televised footage of the burning World Trade Center. They belong to a small meteorological unit based in the Navy Command Center, located on the first floor of the building’s southwest face. McKeown asks her two young aides to bring up New York on the computer because the Command Center is going to send some fighter jets there, in case there is another attack on the city. She orders them to program weather updates for military aircraft converging on New York. However, very soon after this, the Command Center is directly impacted when the Pentagon is hit, and both Flocco and Earhart are killed. POST, 9/16/2001; READER'S DIGEST, 9/2002; CNN, 9/8/2002; NEWSDAY, 4/12/2006 Ronald Vauk, the watch commander in the Navy Command Center, is on the phone trying to get more fighters scrambled at the time the Pentagon is hit, though news reports say he wants them to protect Washington, not New York. HOPKINS MAGAZINE, 11/2001; NEW YORK TIMES, 11/17/2001; BALTIMORE SUN, 9/11/2002 At 9:24 a.m., NORAD had ordered fighters at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia to scramble (see 9:24 a.m. September 11, 2001), though these will not arrive over the Pentagon until after it is hit (see (Between 9:49 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001). COMMISSION, 6/17/2004 According to Lt. Kevin Shaeffer, who works in the Command Center, just prior to the attack on the Pentagon, the watch section and watch leaders in the center are actively engaged in logging and recording the events going on in New York. He later says, “they all responded in exactly the way they were trained,” and, “Had the Command Center not been destroyed it surely would have been able to provide the highest levels of our Navy leadership with updates as to exactly what was occurring.” 3/2003 Entity Tags: Ronald Vauk, Kevin Shaeffer, Nancy McKeown Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight AA 77, Pentagon 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001: Langley Fighters Still Short of Washington; Where and Why Is Not Clear A typical F-16. NORAD Accounts differ as to how far from Washington the F-16 fighters scrambled from Langley are when Flight 77 crashes. The Langley, Virginia, base is 129 miles from Washington. NORAD originally claimed that, at the time of the crash, the fighters are 105 miles away, despite having taken off seven minutes earlier. AMERICAN AEROSPACE DEFENSE COMMAND, 9/18/2001 The 9/11 Commission claims that at 9:36 a.m., NEADS discovers that Flight 77 is only a few miles from the White House and is dismayed to find the fighters have headed east over the ocean. They are ordered to Washington immediately, but are still about 150 miles away. This is farther away than the base from which they took off. COMMISSION, 6/17/2004 The F-16 pilot codenamed Honey (who is apparently Captain Craig Borgstrom) offers a different explanation. As previously mentioned, he says they are flying toward New York, when they see a black column of smoke coming from Washington, about 30 or 40 miles to the west. He is then asked over the radio by NEADS if he can confirm the Pentagon is burning. He confirms it. He says that the mission of the Langley pilots at this time is clear: to keep all airplanes away from Washington. The F-16s are then ordered to set up a defensive perimeter above Washington. 2002, PP. 76; FILSON, 2003, PP. 66; NEW YORK OBSERVER, 2/15/2004 The maximum speed of an F-16 is 1,500 mph. PRESS, 6/16/2000 Had the fighters traveled straight to Washington at 1,300 mph, they would have reached Washington at least one minute before Flight 77. Furthermore, at the time the Pentagon is hit, according to Craig Borgstrom, he and the other Langley pilots are hearing a lot of chatter over their radios, but nothing about airliners crashing into buildings. He says they are “all three on different frequencies… and are getting orders from a lot of different people.” 2003, PP. 66 Entity Tags: Pentagon, Craig Borgstrom, Northeast Air Defense Sector Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight AA 77, Flight UA 93, Key Day of 9/11 Events 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001: Rumsfeld Feels Pentagon Shake When It Is Hit, Allegedly Thinks Bomb Has Gone Off According to most accounts, at the time the Pentagon is hit, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is in his office on the third floor of the Pentagon’s outer E Ring, receiving his daily intelligence briefing. YORK TIMES, 9/12/2001; WOODWARD, 2002, PP. 24; 9/11 COMMISSION, 3/23/2004; CLARKE, 2006, PP. 221; COCKBURN, 2007, PP. 1; GOLDBERG ET AL., 2007, PP. 130; VOGEL, 2007, PP. 438-439 As he later recalls, “the building shook and the tables jumped.” ET AL., 2007, PP. 130 Although he has been informed of the two aircraft hitting the World Trade Center (see Shortly After 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001 and (After 9:03 a.m.) September 11, 2001), he supposedly does not initially suspect a plane has hit the Pentagon, thinking instead that a bomb has gone off. NEWS, 9/16/2001; MSNBC, 9/30/2001; WASHINGTON POST, 1/9/2002 In his nearby office, Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant Vice Admiral Edmund Giambastiani Jr. also hears the explosion, and walks through his doorway toward Rumsfeld’s office. As the two meet, Rumsfeld asks Giambastiani, “What the hell’s happening?” FORCES PRESS SERVICE, 9/8/2006; GOLDBERG ET AL., 2007, PP. 130 Rumsfeld then looks out his window but, he later recalls, sees “nothing here.” MAGAZINE, 10/12/2001; WASHINGTON POST, 1/9/2002 He goes into the hallway and, accompanied by his security guards, hurries toward the crash site (see 9:38 a.m. September 11, 2001). ET AL., 2007, PP. 130 However, Richard Clarke will later contradict these accounts. Clarke indicates that Rumsfeld has been participating in the video teleconference conducted from the White House Situation Room since shortly after the second WTC crash (see (9:10 a.m.) September 11, 2001). He claims that Rumsfeld is still involved in this conference at the time the Pentagon is hit, and he tells his deputy, “I can still see Rumsfeld on the screen, so the whole building didn’t get hit.” 2004, PP. 2-3 AND 7-8 If Clarke’s account were correct, this would presumably mean Rumsfeld is in the Pentagon’s Executive Support Center (ESC), which has secure video facilities, rather than in his office. TIMES, 2/23/2004 But according to other accounts, Rumsfeld does not go to the ESC until around 10:15 a.m., after he returns from the crash site (see (10:00 a.m.-10:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001). 2006, PP. 221; COCKBURN, 2007, PP. 1-5 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001: Pentagon’s ‘War Room’ Doesn’t Realize Building Has Been Hit, Despite Hearing Explosion Those inside the Pentagon’s Executive Support Center (ESC) feel and hear the impact when the building is hit, yet supposedly do not realize what has happened. Victoria Clarke, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, who is in the ESC at this time, calls the center “the Pentagon’s war room, with instant access to satellite images and intelligence sources peering into every corner of the globe.” She describes it as “the place where the building’s top leadership goes to coordinate military operations during national emergencies.” In it with her are Stephen Cambone, Donald Rumsfeld’s closest aide, and Larry Di Rita, Rumsfeld’s personal chief of staff. They’d been discussing how to go about getting every plane currently in the air back on the ground when, according to Clarke, “we felt a jarring thump and heard a loud but still muffled explosion. The building seemed to have shifted.” Yet, despite all the ESC’s resources, they supposedly do not initially realize exactly what has happened. Clarke says to the others, “It must have been a car bomb.” Di Rita replies, “A bomb of some kind.” But one unnamed staffer who frequently uses the ESC for meetings points to the ceiling and says, “No, it’s just the heating and cooling system. It makes that noise all the time.” Clarke later claims, “The notion of a jetliner attacking the Pentagon was exactly that unfathomable back then. Our eyes were glued to television screens showing two hijacked planes destroying the World Trade Center and it still didn’t occur to any of us, certainly not me, that one might have just hit our own building.” Clarke guesses aloud that the noise was something other than the heating and cooling system. In the ensuing minutes, she and the others with her will scramble “for information about what exactly had happened, how many were hurt or killed, and analyze what we could do to prevent further attacks.” Yet, she will later claim, it is only when Donald Rumsfeld comes into the ESC at 10:15 a.m., after having gone to the crash scene, that they receive their first confirmation that a plane has hit the Pentagon (see (10:00 a.m.-10:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001). 2006, PP. 219-221 Those inside the National Military Command Center (NMCC), located next door to the ESC, supposedly do not feel the impact when the Pentagon is hit, and one officer there claims he only learns of the attack from television reports (see Shortly After 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001). 9/4/2002; AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICE, 9/7/2006; COCKBURN, 2007, PP. 5 But Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who is in his office about 200 feet away from the ESC, feels the building shake due to the explosion. After seeing nothing out of his window, he immediately dashes outside to determine what has happened (see 9:38 a.m. September 11, 2001). RADIO 1030 (BOSTON), 9/15/2001; PARADE MAGAZINE, 10/12/2001; WASHINGTON POST, 1/9/2002; 9/11 COMMISSION, 3/23/2004 Entity Tags: Stephen A. Cambone, Larry DiRita, Victoria Clarke Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Pentagon (9:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Flight 93 Passenger Jeremy Glick Describes Hijackers, Bomb Jeremy Glick. Family photo Jeremy Glick calls his wife, Lyz, from Flight 93. He describes the hijackers as Middle Eastern- and Iranian-looking. According to Glick, three of them put on red headbands, stood up, yelled, and ran into the cockpit. He had been sitting in the front of the coach section, but he was then sent to the back with most of the passengers. Glick says the hijackers claimed to have a bomb, which looked like a box with something red around it. Family members immediately call emergency 9-1-1 on another line. New York State Police are patched in midway through the call. Glick finds out about the WTC towers. Two others onboard also learn about the WTC at about this time. Glick’s phone remains connected until the very end of the flight. SUN, 9/16/2001; PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, 10/28/2001; LONGMAN, 2002, PP. 143; MSNBC, 7/30/2002 Entity Tags: Jeremy Glick Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Flight UA 93, Alleged Passenger Phone Calls